Tag: HIV | CATIE Blog

Advancing awareness: Canadian Positive People Network’s U=U Task Force and the fight against HIV stigma

November 11, 2025 • By Breklyn Bertozzi

At the Canadian Positive People Network (CPPN), we strive to end HIV stigma. We also recognize that people living with HIV provide the movement’s strongest guiding voices. That’s why our U=U Task Force is led by people living with HIV and is dedicated to sharing one of the most groundbreaking messages in public health: Undetectable = Untransmittable. U=U means that when a person living with HIV is on effective treatment and has an undetectable viral load, they cannot transmit the virus to their sexual partners. It’s a message that transforms lives, dismantles stigma and redefines what it means to live...

Serving PrEP realness: How Priss Cryption is using drag to power HIV prevention

November 11, 2025 • By Priss Cryption

As a pharmacist, pharmacy professor and researcher who also happens to be a drag queen, I’ve learned something vital from both the clinic and the club: people listen – and learn – when they feel seen. Through my drag persona Priss Cryption, I’m building programs that meet communities where they already gather, bringing HIV pre‑exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and emerging STI prevention tools like doxycycline post‑exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP) to stages, bars, classrooms and social feeds. It’s glitter with a purpose. The need is urgent. Canada reported 2,434 new HIV diagnoses in 2023, a 35% increase from 2022, reminding us that progress...

Let’s talk about how to manage inflammatory skin conditions in people living with HIV

August 18, 2025 • By Daniel Rayner, Dr. Eric McMullen and Dr. Philip Doiron

Despite significant advancements in the treatment and management of HIV/AIDS, many people living with HIV experience skin problems as either standalone conditions or resulting from HIV infection itself. Research shows that over 90% of people living with HIV in a recent U.K. based hospital study had skin conditions. But what are some of the common skin issues associated with HIV? Also, how can treating these skin issues maintain and improve the quality of life of people living with HIV? Eczema People living with HIV are at a higher risk of developing eczema compared to the general population. Ezema can present...

HIV criminalization and the Canadian government’s failed law reform project: Another. Incredible. Disappointment. Surprise!

April 2, 2025 • By Chad Clarke with contributions from Colin Johnson

The Government of Canada has broken its promise to reform the laws that criminalize people living with HIV. In November 2024, the Federal Justice Minister’s office informed the Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization (CCRHC) that the federal government’s long-promised initiative addressing the “overcriminalization” (their term) of HIV was not going to move forward. This announcement came after almost a decade of difficult work on the part of the HIV community. Blood, sweat and tears and some lives were lost while we worked on developing a workable consensus statement that would satisfy a majority of Parliament. The government squandered time,...

The Kotawêw Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doula Project: How kinship has guided our research journey

February 18, 2025 • By Candace Neumann, Melissa Morris and Rusty Souleymanov

The Kotawêw Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doula Project is a community response to the disproportionate impact of HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBIs) on Indigenous women and gender-diverse people. While our work is currently in the research phase, our goal is to co-create a curriculum to train Indigenous doulas who can support community members by fostering connections to HIV/STBBI prevention and treatment services through care grounded in kinship and traditional practices. Our core team is made up of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit researchers with lived experience, and allies. The project is co-led by two Elders/Knowledge Holders, Albert McLeod and...

Providing STBBI services to trans people: Beyond kindness, what truly matters?

February 18, 2025 • By Asya Gunduz

It is around 11 p.m. and I am getting an urgent call from a friend who is a community member and a refugee trans woman living with HIV. She is telling me that she cannot get the urgent treatment she needs at the hospital and that the front desk misgendered her many times and frowned upon her broken English. Later, I learned that different clinics denied and delayed her HIV and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) meds for different reasons like lack of insurance or language barrier. Another community member who is nonbinary, assigned female at birth, was constantly questioned at...